cyrano01

I agree. Russia's greatest hope of coming out of this with anything is for western support to fail. With that being said they have to stay in the fight until the support fails. There will be a combination of freezing the lines and continued attacks. They have to keep attacking for their internal consumption, even the small village here and there portrayed as a win for the public. That explains their continued assaults on basically useless objectives at great cost for little gain. The army has to show the politicians it is trying and the politicians have to show the public some sort of positive gain.
 
There has been a lot of talk of how mass is dead, but I agree it has worked for the RA in this sense with arty. I think that dumb mass will still work on the battlefield but we really haven't seen it used at scale. Instead we have seen mass of fires without mass of forces to follow it up. The RA has tried to fight smart and technical but they lacked the force structure, technology, training, discipline and leadership to do so. Their system is broken for the smart type of cutting edge combined arms warfare we think they should be doing (like western armies). Their hybrid system of the old massed fires and new BTG is beyond their ability to use, control and fight like it should be able to on paper. It is just beyond their abilities, period. 
What isn't and what I think we will see in the winter is dumb mass. The RA could do dumb mass but they haven't had the mass that they need to succeed. We haven't seen it yet in this war where a thousand guns pound the front while 500 tanks smash the defenders and 10,000 infantry follow through the breach. That is the Russian way of war and it would still work. Casualties would be immense with today's firepower but it would still punch a hole. The RA didn't have the manpower to do this in the beginning because they spread themselves so thin and they still don't have enough, but with the chmobiks they just might. 
If Putin and the Kremlin are all in on the superiority of the Russian and look to their history as much as we think they do then them counting on the fresh Siberian divisions (chmobiks) breaking the fascists (UA) in a winter campaign is not unlikely. Expect this sort of attack from the south into the Donetsk region this winter. There are already reports of lots of troops staging in Mariupol with train loads of tanks and guns coming in. 
Will this be a stunning Russian victory and end the war? Nope. Even if it is halfway successful and requires the UA to pull back and give up something like Bahkmut (sp?) it will be a political win for the Kremlin, no matter the cost in men and material. Any kind of Russian success feeds the naysayers in the west and mangles up the support. They need a win to save face and start negotiations and the butcher's bill won't matter.
I certainly could be wrong but personally I'll be very surprised if Russia doesn't try to do something like this during a winter campaign. It is about their only option that I can see for them.

And here we agree fully.  I do not think Russia is capable of freezing this conflict either.  The West and UA have far too many options left to them while the Russian option space has pretty much collapsed.  We can go around the tree a few more times on why - Russia Sucks vs UA-is-bending-theories-of-warfare-in-the-same-scope-as-the-Mongols-didtm- but at the end of the day the reality we are in now is that the Russia is so far behind the UA that it would take Russian military reforms to come anywhere near being able to compete. Reforms that would need to be conducted from the forward edge, back through the operational and strategic, to the industrial, legal and political levels. Russia would realistically need to freeze this conflict for the better part of a decade - even without being under crushing sanctions and isolation - in order to re-tool the military it needed to counter the UA and the West on an equal footing.
I am not sure that is even the play to be honest.  Right now it looks like Russia is desperately playing for time, hoping that Ukraine fatigue will set in and western support will wane.  That, or the west will decide and push for some arbitrary line that "there is where Ukraine has won enough and Russia has lost enough", my money is on the post-2014 lines but even that will require Putin to have a 9mm headache, along with his power circle.  I think the worry that western support will dry up and the RA will be able to resume offensive operations is highly unlikely, the RA is pretty much shattered at this point as far as major offensive operations as far as I can tell.

You mean like going out and playing whack a mole with the TB for 5 years? - the very definition of conducting useless attacks repeatedly for years with no successful outcome.  Now this war compared to COIN is apples to oranges but I do not believe for a second that western militaries are immune to banging their heads against a wall repeatedly.  Russia is really doing the only thing it can think of, and frankly it kind of worked in WW2, or at least that is the myth - just keep feeding live Russian teenagers into combat until the other side runs out of bullets.  I think it is myth as the Soviet military had developed a lot with respect to operational manoeuvre by the end of that war but Putin and his hand picked generals have clearly been reading whatever the Russian version of Ambrose is on WW2 mythology.
Well we are going to have to continue to agree to disagree...cordially of course.  I think you are becoming enraptured with the after glow of the accuracy of your prediction, or at least are at risk of it.  I would red-team the assumptions that your predictions are directly and solely causal to where things are today, maybe just a little bit. 
I do not think it was possible to predict the outcome of this war beforehand unless one knew the Russian strategy.  If Russia had gone for a limited "sewing up of the Donbas", they could have afforded to suck tactically and even operationally but they still may very well have secured their objectives before the world got all up in arms.  I am convinced the response from the West would have been pretty much in line with what it was last time...all squawky and sanctiony but we would not be seeing the massive amounts of military support over a few more acres of Donbass.  It was places like Mariupol and Kharkiv that created the attention and the drama, that and a brilliant IO campaign by the Ukrainian government.
It wasn't until the UA got all the resources to connect the dots on whatever this has become did the fate of the RA become truly sealed, and that needed the political/strategic over-reach mis-step of trying to take the entire country in flagrant violation of the global order.  I do not argue that you very likely predicted the tactical outcomes of this war before it started but the operational and strategic outcomes were impossible to predict until we are about 3 days into this war.  Even then HIMARs and full western support took longer to form up, allowing the RA as poor as it was to still hold onto large swaths of territory and severely damage its opponent.
Finally, the overall Russian offset to sucking tactically has always been overwhelming mass.  You are good Steve but I am not sure Arquilla himself would have predicted just how much the utility of dumber mass would drop in this war, I know I sure didn't.  The Russian initial attack was with the best troops they had, the same approach that worked very well in 2014, and the fall back was Enemy at the Gates with the mountains of Soviet era equipment and ammo - recall everyone freaking out about that back in Apr/May?  No one could predict that would fail on Feb 21st unless they 1) knew the Russian strategy and 2) knew the West would put in place the enablers and support to make the UA able to do something no one thought possible before the war.
I am of a firm mind that a whole lot of conditions had to fall into place in order for us to be where we are in this war today.  Some of those conditions were predictable, like the growing tactical disparity between the two sides as one was modernizing while the other was rotting from corruption.  Others, such as the Russian baffling strategic choices and the UA breaking the rules of warfare to the extent they did, were not predictable and yet were just as determinative to being where we are.  Sure Russian's suck at this war, but that is the beginning of the analysis of this event, not the end of it in my opinion.

Exactly.  I did not see fundamental “sucking”, which is the problem with this philosophical point of view - every video is Russians sucking.  I saw a mech RA outfit get totally shellacked by a combination of what I think were ATGM, UAS and really nasty accurate artillery - how they got there is unclear.  
Those two “low intelligence and problem solving skills guys” were likely already in a state of f#cked up, the lack of weapons is a hint, then getting a UAS grenade in the face pretty much guarantee they are pretty much zombies after that.  
This is not a sign of anything beyond the fact that HE to the face makes everyone have low intelligence and poor problem solving skills.  Having been under accurate mortar fire, I can say from personal experience all one has drills and muscle memory when the world starts exploding around you and we were nowhere near as bad off as those sods in the video.
Those clustered guys may be a symptom of poor training but I would not write off inexperience as it is human nature to huddle together in those situations, hard to reprogram that even in trained troops.

Absolutely, so the trend line of this war is consistent as ISR, lethality and range has once again taken a leap forward.  The issue with reserve advantage (also in response to @Battlefront.com Steve) is that those reserves are also highly visible and hittable than before, so I am not sure the battlefield management advantage will carry over as it has in the past - reserves are very vulnerable interdiction in this environment and being on shorter higher density lines actually will likely make them more vulnerable, right along with logistics lines. ISR, deep precision strike and dispersed infantry really still dominate this battlefield as far as I can tell and creating narrower higher density battle spaces is likely not a good idea - unless you are the RA still trying to fight the last war.

And on that note every single new drone killing widget the Pentagon is testing ought to be in Ukraine getting tested for real, and incidentally winning this war.
And whatever the boffins decide actually works had better be purchased in quantity. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has proven, again, that countries will start wars that make no sense, and keep fighting them long after they have obviously lost. In the hopes of some sort of miracle I suppose. But the oh my god they just used six weeks of ammo, per doctrine, in eight days shock really shouldn't be shocking anymore.

That's kind of always been true though. Consider the trend of what is "high" density from the crimean war, wwi, wwii, gw1, and gw2. The trend is inexorably down as lethality and range both go up. Even during wwi there was a noticeable thining out of the lines, over quite short periods sometimes, such as during the passchendale campaign. Having a solid line of muskets to repel the tommies as they stagger across no man's land is all well and good, but it doesnt count for much when those musketeers all get smooshed by the supporting artillery.
I think the big thing shorter lines will give RU is not higher density (unless you include getting their densities back up to something sane, rather than just a section every km or two  a'la Kharkiv), but the ability to designate and constitute effective reserves. The reduced tactical options for the Ukrainians is a nice bonus, as is having solid flanks anchored by the pre-2014 border.

Is that before or after the Bradley full of 40mm and the bde set of heavy armour. Oh, wait. You said top of the list.
Ok boys, down tools. The priority list has changed. What's that? Oh, yes, I know it changed yesterday. Yes and the day before. Oh, and the day before that too. Yes, I know the priority list now runs to 10 closely typed ... look, just stop what you're doing and start working on [checks notes] ... uh ... a sort of an anti drone thing but not really for drones. Yeah, the specs are a bit vague, but it's really important, ok? Ok. Let's get going.

This looks like a great conversation on UAS, I wish I could add a lot more but have been on the road agin.  I would offer that you are all describing a defensive system that would be successful, at least for awhile, in protecting what I assume is a “capital core” that looks like an all arms manoeuvre team - so mech infantry, tanks, engineers and artillery in support.
Problem with this is at least twofold.  First is the cost and complexity of the defensive system - it is huge in both dollars and data bandwidth.  AI/ML support is a must, as has been noted, but the ability to essentially counter a lethal cloud in order to protect that “capital core” will end up costing more than core itself.  You would also have to add on some sort of c-indirect fire capability in this Iron Dome++ net system.  
Ok, but you do get the traditional conventional heavy capital core back on the battlefield with enough survivability to be able to perform its original function - firepower and manoeuvre.  Or will it?  As far as I can read (and apologize if I missed this) this highly complex and costly protection system (also consider we will need an offensive system to do the same to the enemy) can fend off fully autonomous UAS swarms or at least give a force a fighting chance.  But what about UGS?  What about UGS hybrids?  What about sub-surface systems.  I am talking about a minefield that can move itself in front of an advancing land carrier-like group - because you are going to be able to see it for space - lie entirely dormant until the capital core is basically on top of it, and then autonomously attack that core from multiple dimensions with zero notice?  So we have mines that will scuttle across the ground and attack from below. UGS mines that can pop up and do direct kinetic attacks from offset range. UGS mines that can become UAS and smart attack from above basically from under the feet of the capital core.
None of this is even close to science fiction at this point, hell I am not sure it is even Horizon 3.  My point is that at this point I am not sure the “tank is dead” because the entirety of vehicle based manoeuvre could be dead in this environment.  A sophisticated APS system could be like putting armour on a horse in 1914.  There will come a point when trying to keep our traditional conventional capital core alive stop making sense…so what? We reinvent firepower and manoeuvre.  
The cloud becomes “the core”.  People are simply systems within that cloud, likely dismounted and disaggregated, or virtual - we need the brain forward, not the trigger finger anymore. 

By the way western Air Forces hasn't equivalent
@cyrano01
Here the article in Russian about upgaded R-37M:  https://testpilot.ru/rossiya/vympel/r-37m/
And other artcle, in Enflish about both R-37 and R-37M: https://en.missilery.info/missile/r37

Attacks on Sevastapol percolated through to the BBC. It would appear that the Russians are claiming that British Special Forces were involved and it, along with the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, were all part of an evil British plot. Those perfidious Brits, what will they think of next? I wonder if the MoD and SIS realise they are running the world?
 
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63437212

Russia started to use super-long range air-to-air missiles R-37/R-37M. Theese misiles have claimed range up to 398 km (but more reliable is 300 km). R-37 can be launched from MiG-31BM heavy interceptor, R-37M - from Su-35S and Su-57. Missiles likely get initial targeting from A-50 AWACS
Allegedly already two UKR jets can be shot down with theese missiles. One of more probable victims - last shot down of Su-24M, which was damaged over Donbas and fell in Poltava oblast. Also likely was shot down one MiG-29 HARM carrier. One missile was spotetd over western Ukraine, but result unknown 
MiG-31 now often take off from territory of Belarus
R-37 in flight over westren Ukraine

 
 

RUMINT as if from BSF HQ sources, but. of course, unverified (maybe more realistic variation of Gerashcheno's info)

Result of combined UKR attack:
- frigate "Admiral Makarov" - in result of several USV hits damaged both superstructures, radar equipment knoked out, damged fire control system and communication system. There are some wounded among watches
- cargo ship damaged, probably half-submerged
- the boat sunk, either Serna-class landing craft, or missile boat of Molniya-class (pr.1241, NATO Tarantul class)
- minesweeper "Ivan Golubets" (pr.266M, NATO Natya-class) damaged, the burning is continuing on it
- surface damages got large landing ship and some auxiliary vessels

And to add an insult to an anjury:
 

Attacks on Sevastapol percolated through to the BBC. It would appear that the Russians are claiming that British Special Forces were involved and it, along with the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, were all part of an evil British plot. Those perfidious Brits, what will they think of next? I wonder if the MoD and SIS realise they are running the world?
 
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63437212

This is a unique video for me. At 10.21 minutes of the video, I see people with whom I took refuge in the basement of the clinic after my apartment was left without windows. Later, I corresponded with a guy who is standing with a child in his arms, he said that they were evacuated on March 08. I offered them to go out with me on March 05, When the hospital staff decided it was time to evacuate but they refused and spent three days in the basement without electricity and water.
The video shows moments a few days after the start of active fighting for Irpin. By that time, evacuation corridors had already been organized. People knew in advance when and from what place the evacuation would be organized. I left Irpen on the fifth of February. Then there was no organized evacuation, no one understood exactly where the enemy was, where the safe route was. Everyone went to the bridge in the way that he considered correct. And some paid for their mistake with their lives. I went to the bridge alone on foot and I think I was lucky.
War brings people together. In the face of danger, everyone strives to do something to help others. Pharmacies distributed medicines to everyone for free, shops distributed food, a lot of volunteers appeared ready to help others. From the second day of the war, I was constantly in the local clinic. We unloaded humanitarian aid and food, carried the wounded (a point was set up at the polyclinic to stabilize the wounded before sending them to a military hospital). The victims, whom the doctors could not save, had to be buried right in the courtyard of the clinic, as the road to the cemetery was shot through.
 
Most of the wounded were civilians. I remember two cases in particular. In one, a man and a woman brought a dead child of 5 years old with a gunshot wound to the hospital. They tried to leave Bucha to the west, their car was fired upon by Russian soldiers. In the second case, a pregnant girl with a damaged spine was brought to the hospital. She and her husband were in their apartment when the shell hit their home. The husband died on the spot. she got a spinal injury. Unfortunately, as a result of this injury, her child also died. She lost her most loved people in one day.
 

I must say that my current life is a paradise compared to what it was at the end of February, beginning of March. Then, in the current situation with electricity, I am daily exposed to artillery shelling and air bombing. I was in my apartment and just moved away from the window, when a 152-mm shell fell right in front of my window, at a distance of about 100 meters. They threw shards of glass at me, later I found one of the shards in my apartment. Miraculously, I didn't come back. But this is a trifle. It all happened so suddenly that I didn't even have time to get scared.
Air bombardment of senior artillery. When you sit in the basement and hear the rapidly growing whistle of a Russian jet engine. With this blood in your veins, you literally freeze with fear, you understand that now he will drop bombs and, perhaps, you will find yourself under the rubble. When the FAB-500 bomb explodes a kilometer away from you. A building in the basement that literally shakes like an earthquake.
But I experienced the greatest fear when, in the conditions of street fighting, I traveled from Irpen (I had the stupidity to wait until the last, hoping that the Russians were not going to my city, because the bridge to Kyiv had already been blown up). As I was walking towards the bridge along the main street on the next street, literally 200 meters away from me, a heavy firefight broke out. I saw tracers flying across the intersection that I had to cross to get to the bridge. I waited until the Russian turned the fire in the other direction, and with all my might ran across the intersection. Despite this, thanks to adrenaline, I had more energy than ever. I ran a mile and a half with large and heavy bags. Normally I wouldn't be able to do this.
 

Like us all, I've been pondering the 'death of tanks' idea, and I can't help thinking that the entire premise of the question is wrong.
On 20 Nov 1917 the British lost 50% of the almost 500 tanks employed At dawn on 8 Aug 1918 the British had almost 600 tanks, but by the 12th that was down to just six (6)! 99% casualties, in 4 days. In late 1939 the Germans lost around 10% of their tanks in a campaign lasting just over a month In mid 1940 the Germans lost 33% of their tanks in a campaign lasting just on 6 weeks. In 1967 the Israelis lost 50% of their tanks in just six days In 1973 the Israelis lost 25% of their tanks in a war lasting 19 days And yet, every one of those battles and campaigns were considered wildly successful.
Tanks have always been vulnerable. They are protected, far more than the PBI wandering around in just a cotton shirt, but that isn't a free pass away from the realities of high-intensity peer-level warfare. The question is - or should be - whether they are effective, and whether they bring capabilities that can't otherwise be realised. The answer to that was, and still is, yes.

I feel like we have switched sides in this debate - from the “It isn’t all about Russia sucking” side I think your analogy is missing some key elements that lead me to delusion, not plan.
In your analogy the missing facts are 1) you don’t own a dump truck, you have three guys and wheelbarrow, and 2) that is not your driveway.  So in this case you would be building a plan, a flawed rigid one even under your own delusion, that is detached from reality.  
To carry over to the war, Putin made (at least) three major strategic assumptions;
- Ukraine would fall quickly and resistance would be short, light and unorganized.  His force to time, space and objectives clearly points to that.  He tried to blitz conquer a nation larger than France with a population of 44 million with 300k troops and a laser light show.
- Any resistance would be quickly eaten by Russian bear and be pooped out as a happily subservient puppet satellite state.  Given the history of Ukraine, even recent history, the idea that he could control this country once he achieved victory through brutal oppression was, let’s say ‘flawed’ from the get go.
- The weak willed and dithering West would not be able to react and happily keep buying Russian gas and drop any sanctions through boredom before the war chest ran out, as Ukraine was violated and then dominated. 
From the loins of these brilliant assessments sprung a 5-6 operational axis assault with ridiculous LOCs and zero establishment of operational pre-conditions to disrupt, dislocate and isolate Ukraine - that is a fail on any operational planning staff exercise, I assure you.  The fact that the insane plan was rigid and built on a tactically messed up military was just the ice cream on this doomed poopy cake.
This was not red teamed nor acid washed, nor did it have a Plan B should any of those ridiculous assumptions prove to be false…this was and is the “hold my beer” military operation of the century…and given the history of the last 20 years that is saying something.  This makes shock and awe, and “they will greet us with joy in the streets of Baghdad” Iraq 2003 look like pure political and military genius in comparison.  Why?  Facts, not assumptions.
- The scale and scope of this military operation was risked by its very own ambition.  The levels of friction of a WW2 scale invasion with a fraction of the forces are immense.  Ukraine would not need to resist much for it to come under enormous strain. Russia has a large and expensive intelligence service that should have been working for years in this, the idea that it did not know the UA was set up for a hybrid resistance and being fed US ISR is laughable.  No, the political level did not want to hear facts on the ground, it was a delusion.
- the most likely Ukraine COA was to resist unconventionally while the political mechanism retreated to a safe country.  This means at a minimum Russia was going to have an organized insurgency and very loud external political opposition, while trying to control a conquered nation with 300k troops - aside: Ukraine is roughly 600k sq kms, that is 2 sq kms per Russian soldier in multi-dimensional conflict space.  And how long were they going to stay there getting IED’d and committing high profile warcrimes? Did Russia have a stabilization plan or post-war reconstruction plan?  W.T.F?!
- Russian and Putin completely failed to understand that this whole thing was not about them and Ukraine, it was about the global order (or maybe based on that annexation speech Putin did, and that makes it worse).  The West cannot remain “the West” if Russia is allowed to do this war.  In short, Putin did the one thing he absolutely should have avoided in the prosecution of this war…we backed us into a corner. That cut through the divisions and entitled ennui very quickly.  We had no other choice as the entire global drug deal of the western order hinges on P5/UNSC big powers behaving themselves.  Even US exceptionalism took a major hit in Iraq in 2003 as it found itself isolated and the global order fractured…and it went nowhere near as rogue as this clown show.  Russian exceptionalism is not a thing anywhere accept in Moscow, they did not have the global power or idiosyncratic points to pull off something that humbled the worlds last superpower.
And this is just me on a Thursday. Russia should have had roomfuls of political and military staff, armed with real time intel data.  Guys whose entire professional lives is understanding UA field kitchens, sitting next to a guy who could map the twitter feeds of Smalltown Ukraine down to the mayor’s dog walkies schedule - you are about to take on the single largest dice role of a global power since WW2 FFS, taking that on with iron clad assumptions of one 70 year old and a bunch of yes men is not planning it is a suicide cult.
Finally, as to Lviv.  I have no doubt it had point of failure and one tough bill. But compared to what Russia tried in reality it looks positively pedestrian.  A quick scan of the map shows two possible corridors of advance and about 270 kms to try and do a cut off.  A tough ask but frankly a much better place to get airborne and airmobile killed.  If you take Lviv and then up to the Carpathian Mts, Ukrainian resistance, which will come regardless, is going to supported by a trickle not the freakin flood they have on their hands now.
You are probably correct in that Russia thought it too risky but only because of their bizarro world view of reality.  Clearly resistance was almost universal and any intelligent organization that missed that was broken, or the political level who ignored them was…delusional.  In fact the whole Hard Power option was insane and we are living with the result.
So this was a “solid plan” like me becoming a super model is a “solid plan”…I need only drop a few pounds and de-age by 30 years and my dream will come.  And anyone who disagrees with me gets tossed out a window.

Damn autocorrect, well there many days it did feel like a prison sentence so incarceration is not too far off the mark.
Ah you see our thinking has already shifted.  A modern breaching operation could easily be penetration by light infantry and hammering of logistics and support by PGM.  A full on combat breach may not even be required which points to Russia continuing to employ the old playbook rather than re-write one.  Russia may all sighted in ready to cover the obstacle when stuff behind them starts exploding and supplies get cut off. They then abandon the position in a reenactment of the Maginot Line and the UA dismantles it administratively.  But by the old playbook I see nothing inherently wrong with how they did it.

Ok let’s get some knowledge on this whole Wagner Line thing.  I will caveat that 1) I am not even sure a complex obstacle belt will work against how the UA has been fighting this war and 2) I have no idea how long this Wagner line is, or whether it ties into natural obstacles nor what the fire plans are around it.
That said, be very wary of the internet.  I see a lot of people talking about stuff they have no idea about, particularly in the “Russia sux camp”.  I do not go into my professional background too much for many reasons but I will say that one of my military incarcerations over a 34 year career is a military engineer, so take that into account if you like.
First, I doubt the veracity of the styrofoam claim very much.  Why?  Because it would take more time and resources to make a fake dragons tooth than to simply pour some concrete over steel bars.  I have heard nothing about Russia suffering a concrete shortage and this whole styrofoam theory sound like complete BS.
Second, efficacy of the Wagner line dragons teeth.  Dragons teeth need not be fixed or footed, particularly not the pyramidal ones I am seeing in this pictures.  They are designed to roll and catch the ground on their points as they do.  In doing so they can either belly up a tracked vehicle or de-track it.  Either way they act as caltrops for tracked IFVs and armor, looking for mobility kills but these are just the appetizer.
Third, these are clearly part of a complex obstacle.  The sorts of obstacles are designed to pull combat engineering and key armoured resources forward and expose them the fires.  If you can kill them then bull-rushing such a complex obstacle will likely yield in and around 70-80% casualties.  It isn’t how large the dragons teeth are, or how much they weigh, it is their placement.  I have heard a lot of “well we can just go in and tow them out” or “bring in a dozer and simply push them”.  Sure, but you are doing that in the middle of a 400m deep minefield while having ATGMs and artillery dropped on your head.  In fact the dragons teeth I have seen in that double row are likely the horizontal safelane markers as well.  As you would expect dismounting in the middle of a minefield with crowbars and chains is a good way to turn trained sappers into names on a memorial.
Finally, stuff like dragons teeth are hell on mine plows and rollers.  The get in between them and mess up the tank.  So this means engineers have to bring up technical vehicles like dozer tanks..which are very rare on the battlefield.  I have seen pics of these dragons teeth next to railways and embankments, which is really smart as that makes the mechanical clearing job that much harder.  About the only expedient way for this is explosive clearing - which I am not sure the UA even have - dragons teeth then should be fixed to avoid being blown aside.  But when combined with an AT ditch and some decent sighting that can even stump an explosive breach.
So no, there is nothing wrong with those Dragons Teeth as is at least as far as I can see from a picture, maybe not the most awesome I have ever seen but as part of a larger complex obstacle they will do exactly what they were designed to so long as that obstacle is covered by fire and observation.  The Russians are going to need about 100kms of these in a triple belt with KZs pre-sighted to get the effect I think they are looking for, which I do not think they can do and shame on the UA if they give them time and space to do this.
Remember that diagram I did up a while back, look both left towards effect and right towards capability when seeing stuff like this and always keep in mind the entire picture.  And avoid groups who are just seeing what they want to see at this point.

Ok, but these are also all strategies adopted by weaker sides of a confrontation, some straight out of Mao’s playbook - who he ‘borrowed’ from others.  I have no doubt the UA was planning an unconventional resistance and if we recall the early days of this war, they were kinda scrambling.  I think what surprised everyone one was just how well it worked.  It morphed from a resistance to a new form of defence/corrosive warfare that I am not sure anyone was ready for.  Further when Phase I collapsed, recall the RA did withdraw back to the border.  Even with all the abandoned gear they were not driven there by any conventional offensive waged by the UA.
I am not sure the Ukrainians knew the true state of the Russian military well in advance; I am not even sure the west did to be honest.  We could see it here on the forum about 72 hours in (I still have a copy of some of those posts).
Jumping to the end - ok, I think we agree on more than we disagree on these points.  One area that I do think the Russians did entirely get in their own way and frankly even with the force they have could have done much better, maybe even pulled off what they were looking for, was in the arena of military strategy.
They had several strategic COAs going into this from which everything that followed was a direct result.  They chose - typically Russian - a strategy of overwhelmtion (yep, it is a word that I did not just totally make up).  5-6 operational axis of advance and massively deep penetration requirements was ridiculous overreach for both the size of the force and the enablers they had available to them. NATO would be really stretched to pull off such a fight - if I recall correctly we only had 3 axis of advance in CMSF.  The Russian way overestimated their forces and way underestimated what modern equipped defence could do (they were not alone in that).  All of this was exacerbated by very poor operational level targeting and logistics, and as you not abysmal tactical C2 - frankly I am not even sure how the managed the road move, let alone contact.  And to your point, this over reach may still have failed if the UA was less capable - I say may because it would have been a much closer run thing, as you note straight up mass and speed still count for something.
Now if the Russian military had done two strategic things, this war may have turned out differently.  1) Establish preconditions.  This costs time but hitting key transportation and communication/information infrastructure and power production and distribution.  Economic/finance systems.  And finally actually tried something nuanced in the diplomatic space other than “lie, lie, still lying..and now I am going to prove I was lying…”. To this add build a competitive C4ISR architecture that feeds a joint targeting enterprise and then get some unity of command going to control the whole thing.  All this and keeping the political level - with zero military expertise - from micro managing.
2) Isolate Ukraine.  Once you make the nation go dark and even with everything Ukraine already had, you focus on cutting them off from all support.  I find it baffling that Russia not only did not do this in the diplomatic space, they did not do it as part of military strategy…here Russia sucking was a definitive factor.  Put the main effort on a drive to Lviv and cut the western corridor approaches.  Reduce the axis of advance to Lviv, Kherson and Kyiv, which is still very ambitious.
If they did that from Day 1, I am still not sure they would have achieved success, best case they are fighting an historic insurgency-from-hell fully backed by the west.  But this clown show they are in might have had a few less acts.
Military strategy is clearly the one area where Russia “sucking” is all on them.  Operationally and tactically I think it gets a lot more complicated and frankly the Ukrainian defence (and then offensives) will be studied for years to fully understand what just happened.  I am not sure anyone could solve for the Ukrainian resistance to be honest.  The fact that the RA itself was a key factor in them failing faster, I totally agree with.
I personally think that warfare has changed - the needle has moved - I think it has shifted much farther and faster than we ever expected, which is actually normal.  I think things as basic as force ratios and principles need to be revisited (Surprise, for example…what does one do with that?). 
Seriously, you guys should, start thinking about the Op Research game.  Training Cbt Tm commanders is cool, but I think there is going to be a serious market for OR - of course you will need to make CM massively bloated, less user friendly and cost over a billion dollars in order for western militaries to buy in.

I believe I can chime in on this as I am a qualified test subject for these sorts of anti personnel obstacles (raised 2 boys). If the RA can somehow manage to steal all the footwear from the UA, then scattered Legos would definitely be a very effective obstacle to the infantry!! 

The Russian command has finally centralized the process of command and control of its troops in the northern part of the Lugansk region of Ukraine - a grouping of troops "West" has been created, which included mainly units and subunits of the Western Military District, reinforced by a number of units from the troops of the Central Military District (PPU is located in the north - the eastern outskirts of the village of Pokrovskoe, Lugansk region). In particular, it included forces and means:
- 1st Guards TA
- 20th CAA
- 2nd CAA (3 BTGr from the 15th, 21st and 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade)
- 41st CAA (1 BTgr from the 35th Motorized Rifle Brigade)
- 11th AK.
In general, this is up to about 10-11 BTGr or units equal in number to them (although not all of them are still staffed with personnel and weapons and military equipment to full-time standards). Of these, at least 4-5 are in the reserve of the first and second stages. Therefore, the "gaps" in this operational direction of the front, the Russian command is actively closing with formations of the BARS type, "personnel" units of the 1st and 2nd AK and their so-called "mobilization reserve", as well as various kinds of "assault units of the Wagner PMC" (this is about another, up to 6 "battalions" - most of them are exclusively "rifle", without heavy weapons and military equipment).
 
The main task of this grouping is to hold the northern part of the Lugansk region of Ukraine and prevent the Ukrainian Defense Forces from reaching the state border of Ukraine in the Kharkiv and Lugansk regions in the Peski-Novokievka section. The day before yesterday, yesterday and today, active hostilities resumed in the Svatovsky direction.
Thus, the enemy with a motorized rifle company of the 423rd "Yampolsky" infantry regiment of the 4th TD of the 1st Guards TA, with the support of 4 tanks and fire from two artillery batteries, tried to attack the forward positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the direction of Novoselovskoye - Berestovo. However, during the 40-minute battle, he suffered losses and retreated to his starting lines in the Novoselovskoye area... Subsequently, units of the 4th TD of the enemy were forced to go on the defensive in the area of the villages of Krokhmalnoe and Novoselovskoye ...
In the area with Nevsky the enemy continued to hold forward positions with the forces of a motorized rifle unit with armored vehicles, although it was obvious that there was a very real possibility that this enemy unit would fall directly into encircling ...
During the last 2 days, this enemy unit suffered significant losses due to the fire impact of the forward units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and, ultimately, this morning was forced to leave their positions in the village and near it ...
 
Southwest of Svatovo (near the village of Kovalevka), the enemy is intensively preparing for defensive operations. To this end, the enemy command deploys a battalion defense area in this direction. It will probably be occupied by units of the 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 2nd Guards. CAA (up to 1.5 BTG), at least during the past 2 nights, the enemy has been actively moving the forces and means of this brigade to this area.
In addition, the enemy command to the left flank of this defense area also transferred a reinforced motorized rifle company (up to 22 armored vehicles and more than 100 fighters) from the area with. Miluvatka. This morning its deployment was recorded southeast of Kovalevka.
It is obvious that the command of the enemy troops will soon try to counterattack with these forces and means the forward positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of the village. Karmazanovka, which are confidently advancing towards Svatovo... After all, in this direction, the advanced units of the Ukrainian army have quite good chances not only to cut the R-66 road in the Svatovo-Chervonopopovka section, but also to block Svatovo from the south in general...

Scotland is in the World Series ? 😲
 
( sorry, couldn't resist ) 🤣